SMALL BUSINESS; The Unmet Needs of Motherhood Bring Out the Entrepreneurial Spirit

A new wave of professional women is leveraging pregnancy into business opportunity.

They had not expected to become entrepreneurs. They had promising careers to return to, even if some of them had been laid off in the creaky economy of the last few years. But as they approached motherhood, then cared for their newborns, they kept wondering why nobody had made a product they wanted but could not find.

And then they decided to make it themselves.

Consider Beth Besner, 42, of Davie, Fla., who in 1995 created the Table Topper, a disposable place mat that adheres to restaurant tables so toddlers can eat on a clean surface. Ms. Besner, who practiced bankruptcy law for five years before having children, says she got the idea for the product after her 6-month-old son grabbed his plate of food in a restaurant and ''threw it across the room like a Frisbee.''

She spent months looking in vain for a food holder that would stick to tables. So she designed one herself, created a company called Neat Solutions and, using her legal expertise, patented it and negotiated contracts for its manufacture and distribution. Today, sales top $1 million a year, and the company has developed another product, the Potty Topper, a disposable sheet that adheres to public toilets. She got the inspiration from the mess her toddler made with the slippery paper toilet seat covers often found in public restrooms.

''This thing took on a life of its own,'' said Ms. Besner, the mother of three sons, who recently sold the business to her brother-in-law. She remains with the company as its chief inventor.

Another enterprising mother is Julia Beck Bromberg, 36, who got the idea for her company at classes she attended when she was pregnant with her first child. Her teachers gave her a list of items to buy for the big day, she said, but ''I was very large, and the thought of running all over town to find these products tired me out.'' In early 2000, a year and a half after giving birth to a girl, she started Forty Weeks, a Potomac, Md., online supplier of products to help women in labor. Its biggest seller is a ''labor comfort kit,'' with items like fluffy washcloths, massage oils and breath mints for birthing partners. ''I didn't go into this blind,'' Ms. Bromberg said. ''I felt like I had the business savvy to pull it off.''

As her company's only employee, Ms. Bromberg, a former magazine consultant, does most of her own market research. She follows women into the lactation rooms of baby supply stores, butts into conversations between mothers with baby carriages at the local Starbucks and accosts women in toy stores, all to get ideas for new products.

While she declines to reveal sales figures, she says they have risen steadily by 15 percent a year, and in February she opened a consulting service for start-ups in maternity and baby products. A frequenter of industry trade shows, she says she has noticed a new sophistication in the mothers who start maternity and baby products businesses. A few years ago, many of them were ''one-hit wonders, who came up with a fun idea and put it out in the marketplace'' but did not do much to extend their brands, she said.

Now, the entrepreneurs she runs across at such events are more likely to have been high-powered executives who stumbled upon a great idea after having babies. These women often have specialties, like finance or legal expertise, that help them gain a bigger piece of the $5.4 billion baby products market.

With so many women clamoring for a piece of the maternity market, the competition would seem to be fierce. Wrong, says Rebecca Matthias, a doyenne of the trade who has watched it evolve.

In 1982, Ms. Matthias, then an architect and construction engineer pregnant with her first child, founded Mothers Work Inc., now the largest maternity company in the world, with nearly $500 million in annual sales. She started the company in her home on an investment of $10,000 after becoming frustrated at the paltry selection of maternity wear in stores. One thing that has surprised her since then, she says, is the willingness of women entrepreneurs to share their secrets.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

''Most of us don't see one another as a threat,'' she said. Her company, with its A Pea in the Pod, Mimi Maternity and Motherhood Maternity Brands, opened its 1,000th store in Deptford, N.J., in August. Bloomberg Finance recognized it in January as the best-performing stock in the country, and the Small Business Administration honored Ms. Matthias last month for her entrepreneurial achievements.

A more recent entry into that market is Belinda Wasser, 42, owner of Blueberrybabies.com, a Web site that she started last October from her home in Jamaica Plains, Mass., to sell baby gifts like diaper bags and designer booties.

Ms. Wasser was laid off from her job as a manager at Digitas, a consulting and advertising business in Boston where she was in charge of a $3 million budget, after she gave birth to her daughter in August 2002. ''It was the best thing that ever happened to me,'' she said, enabling her to start a business where she could use her management skills and set her own hours. She took a class for entrepreneurial women, learning ''how to think like a C.E.O.,'' she said, and she hired a business coach to help her through the early stages of the venture. She declines to disclose sales but says they are growing strongly.

Sharon Mullen, 44, who started a Web site called Inventive Parent seven years ago in Hampton, N.H., to sell products created by parents, has an explanation for the proliferation of entrepreneurial mothers. As more women put off having children to pursue careers, Ms. Mullen says, they accumulate business skills and capital -- then use both to start businesses after taking pregnancy leaves.

Ms. Mullen started Inventive Parent after being laid off from her job as the theater manager for the arts center at Tufts University. Mothers whose products she has featured on her site include a rocket scientist, a doctor and a lawyer. One of her inventions on the site is the Car Seat Cozy, a coverlet resembling a sleeping bag intended to keep children warm in the car.

If mothers think running a start-up will take less time than their old jobs, they had better think again. Just ask Missy Cohen-Fyffe, 42, a former public relations executive who started Babe Ease in Pelham, N.H., in 1999 so she could spend more time with her newborn.

After one product, the Clean Shopper, a cloth covering for child seats in shopping carts, was featured in a national magazine in 2000, she said, hundreds of phone calls from customers poured in to her home office day and night. She has since hired three full-time employees and set up a Web site to handle orders. Revenue has ''skyrocketed'' from $21,000 in the first year of operation, she said, though she will not disclose figures.

Ms. Cohen-Fyffe usually works 50 to 60 hours a week, spreading them over evenings and weekends so she can spend more time during the day caring for her sons, Joshua, 8, and Andrew, 6. ''I have to admit,'' she said, ''it's a lot more work than I thought it would be.''